


a living chinese finger-trap

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-14
Updated: 2006-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They could drink together and laugh together and talk for hours and hours, he could have Dom a thousand different ways, pull him apart, leave him wrecked, and there was still something he couldn't reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a living chinese finger-trap

Dom is like one of those puzzle-boxes that cannot be opened by a key. The inner chamber can only be revealed by exactly the right pressure on exactly the right spot.

Billy used to touch Dom all over _(jaw mouth spine shoulder back stomach hip thigh)_ and Dom would grin, or gasp, or sigh in response, but something, something, never opened. They could drink together and laugh together and talk for hours and hours, he could have Dom a thousand different ways, pull him apart, leave him wrecked, and there was still something he couldn't reach.

Those puzzle-boxes come carved with intricate designs: the curved backs of bearded dragons, concentric circles stacked endlessly one inside another, jagged tooth-like triangles interlocking forever. Billy imagines such a box with panels decorated with the fluid, spiralling curves of Maori carving, like waves on the shore.

Sometimes _(long ago)_ when he was running his hands over Dom, in blind search of such a vulnerable spot, he imagined those patterns etched on to Dom’s face, the familiar made fey and strange by the foreign and beautiful shapes and curves. He traced the contours of Dom’s face with the lightest of fingertips, drawing curlicues on his temples, straight lines down the bridge of his nose, turned the faint wrinkles _(laughter, and squinting against the sun)_ around his eyes into triumphant waves. As he did, he imagined Dom’s eyes staring back from the mask, blue-grey river stones set into the wood in place of glittering pieces of abalone _(paua)_. He couldn't see himself reflected in them.

Hawaii is not New Zealand. You can see the mountains, green and brown, from the beach. Hawaii is busy, yet beautiful; the complicated, intricate world of a coral reef, not the strange wash of life into a tidal pool on the rocks, things swept from their surroundings by the whim of the waves, waiting for the surf to draw them back.

The air is sweet with frangipani here, and drawing air into your lungs is almost a blessing, rather than a necessity. When Billy meets Evie, he chokes on the scent.

She’s beautiful, but he knew that. Golden skin, slanted green-hazel eyes, long curling hair. She wears strands of beads looped around her slender wrists, coloured rubber charity bands, leather strips woven into an intricate pattern. She laughs easily, sea-coloured eyes shining, and her knee bears a rusty scrape _(Rock-climbing, she tells him.)_ She drinks beer from the bottle with them, and when Billy plays the gallant and opens hers with a flourish, her eyes go cat-like with the force of her smile, and she knocks her bottle with a glassy clink against his, and murmurs _slainte._

When she slides her hands over Dom’s arms, shoulders _(golden from the Hawaiian sun now, golden like her),_ Billy recognises that need to touch, mark, claim. Dom beams, his bright familiar beam, seeking to share his delight in her with Billy.

Billy smiles back politely, but then Evie catches his eye, and ish smile becomes a real one.

Later, when she’s gone _(appointment early in the morning... my house is closer... I'll let you guys catch up)_ , the absence of smooth skin and throaty laughter and jangling bracelets makes Billy feel oddly bereft. He skims his hand up the warm curve of Dom’s back. The sheets are fresh and white, newly-washed, and he frowns. Dom surely never thought to put clean sheets on the bed). Under his hand, the skin is faintly marked; Billy shuts his eyes and breathes in the clean scent of the sheets and Dom’s skin, his hair, the faint tang of the sea and a clinging flowery fragrance. He tries not to imagine Evi carving white sigils into the brown of Dom’s back with the press of her fingernails, but that’s the picture behind his eyes when Dom’s mouth is warm and mobile around him, and he’s weaving his hands through Dom’s hair, bleached pale.

He kisses him once more that night, a brush of lips to the back of Dom’s neck, at the top of his spine just where his hair hits it. He doesn’t wonder anymore if the box will open; he thinks that if it ever could _(more than it already does; it's never enough)_ , that perhaps the sea got into it, swelled the wood until it could no longer spring open for the right hand. She still seems to be searching, after all.

It doesn't make him feel any better. 


End file.
